Groundhog Day is a 1993 comedy film directed by Harold Ramis, starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. It was written by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis and based on a story by Rubin. In the film, Murray…

The Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 was introduced by Democratic Senator Barack Obama and Republican Senator Tom Coburn with an intention to create a public website with an easily searchable database of the name and amount of every federal grant, contract or award of $25,000 or more. The alternative approaches for obtaining this information are generally considered to be too complex for the general public.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously passed the measure on July 27, 2006 and it was on its way to full Senate passage when an unknown Senator placed a “secret hold” on the bill. According to Senate rules, the bill will never come to a vote as long as the hold continues. Holds are an unofficial part of Senate parliamentary tradition that allow a single senator to block a measure anonymously.

In August 2006, a bipartisan group of bloggers initiated a campaign to identify the Senator who placed the secret hold. Eventually, a previous story on Coburn was found where he identified Stevens as “the only senator blocking it”[2]. On August 30, a spokesman for the Senator confirmed that he was the man behind the secret hold on the Coburn/Obama bill.[3]